Queen Mary

NEW YORK -- The world's longest ocean liner sailed under one of the world's longest suspension bridges and past one of the world's most famous statues Thursday before docking in New York City for the first time. The ship, the 1,132-foot-long Queen Mary 2, swept under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge as the sun was coming up on a hazy harbor. The ship, carrying 2,600 passengers and 1,200 crew members, glided by the Statue of Liberty, surrounded by tugboats, police vessels and Coast Guard boats, all dwarfed by the black-and-white leviathan.

The city Harbor Commission voted to keep the Queen Mary financially afloat through the end of the year, but that does not guarantee that the historic ocean liner's hotel and restaurants will survive. The commission voted 4-0 to keep the permanently berthed ship open as a tourist attraction from Sept. 30 to Jan. 2. Commissioners will ask Walt Disney Co., whose lease expires in September, to manage the 60-year-old liner until another operator can be found. Whatever Disney decides, the ship's hotel and banquet facilities will close on Sept.

Dark Harbor returns in October with a new haunted maze and a motley crew of morbid characters inspired by ghost stories from the Queen Mary's haunted history. > Photos: Dark Harbor haunted mazes at the Queen Mary The Dark Harbor haunted event in and around the permanently moored Queen Mary cruise ship in Long Beach will feature six mazes filled with 250 monsters. I skipped Dark Harbor in 2011 because event organizers offered nothing new, recycling the exact same mazes and themes from the previous year. Since then, Dark Harbor's creative team has doubled the number of monsters in hopes of increasing the scare factor and improving the mazes.

She looks restless in retirement, straining at her moorings, hoping for one last run at the open sea.That the great liner Queen Mary is a mere tourist attraction and floating hotel in Long Beach does seem an inglorious way to treat the onetime ''Queen of the Seas.''Her maiden voyage was in the summer of 1936. RMS Queen Mary was sleek and elegant, not like the graceless, glass-and-chrome ships of today.Her speed and high shipboard style impressed the world. But it wasn't enough. Thirty one years and 1,000 Atlantic crossings later, she made her final voyage.

The Queen Mary will stay where it is, the City Council has decided, ending a year of uncertainty over the famed luxury liner's course. Council members voted 8-1 on Tuesday to take over the money-losing tourist attraction from the independent Harbor Department, which wanted to sell the Queen Mary to a Hong Kong firm for $20 million. The Walt Disney Co. dropped plans last December to build a theme park, then said in March that it would stop operating the Queen Mary.

Rejecting a potentially lucrative offer by Japanese promoters, Long Beach City Council members said Wednesday they want to keep the historic Queen Mary home and look for other ways to finance $32 million in needed ship repairs.

Dark Harbor returns in October with a new haunted maze and a motley crew of morbid characters inspired by ghost stories from the Queen Mary's haunted history. > Photos: Dark Harbor haunted mazes at the Queen Mary The Dark Harbor haunted event in and around the permanently moored Queen Mary cruise ship in Long Beach will feature six mazes filled with 250 monsters. I skipped Dark Harbor in 2011 because event organizers offered nothing new, recycling the exact same mazes and themes from the previous year. Since then, Dark Harbor's creative team has doubled the number of monsters in hopes of increasing the scare factor and improving the mazes.

ST. NAZAIRE, France -- Inaugurating its reign as the world's largest ocean liner, the Queen Mary 2 sliced into the dark waters of the Atlantic on Monday, seen off by tens of thousands of onlookers and jets streaking the skies red, white and blue. The gigantic, shimmering vessel dwarfed tugboats that pulled it out to sea for its new British owner, Cunard Lines. But memories of 15 people killed when a gangway to the ship collapsed on visitors' day five weeks ago dampened the mood in St. Nazaire.

SOUTHAMPTON, England -- The world's largest cruise ship, the Queen Mary 2, arrived at its home port on the south coast of England and was welcomed in a ceremony tempered by the deaths of 15 people in a shipyard accident in November in St. Nazaire, France, where it was built. Hundreds of onlookers watched Friday as the $800 million vessel arrived, dwarfing small boats that sprayed jets of water. Queen Elizabeth II will officially name the vessel in a ceremony Jan. 8. The 14-day maiden voyage, from Southampton to Fort Lauderdale, is to start Jan. 12.

Hotel Maya in Long Beach has a sweet little deal for those who spend the night on Labor Day : a room price of $93 on 9/3. Get it? OK, for most of us the holiday ends Monday, but it might be a pleasant unwind for those who have an extra day off. The deal: The Hotel Maya, whose design is loosely inspired by its namesake ancient civilization, used to be a Joie de Vivre property but now is under the auspices of DoubleTree by Hilton. The property near the Queen Mary has 199 rooms and a man-made beach called Playa at the Maya.

Adrienne Ghio Anderson, a publicist at Paramount for 18 years, a freelance publicist for celebrity and professional clients and an occasional producer, died July 15 after a lengthy illness at the Motion Picture & Television Hospital in Woodland Hills. She was 87. Anderson produced a stage show called "Las Vegas Extravaganza," a program shot on the Queen Mary for television and four films. She was a past vice president and longtime member of the Hollywood Women's Press Club, where she was involved in the annual Golden Apple Awards; a past director of the Greater Los Angeles Press Club; as well as a member of Women in Film and of the auxiliary board of Screen Smart Set, which raised money for the Motion Picture and Television Fund.

ABOARD THE QUEEN VICTORIA -- The anecdote has been rattling around Cunard Line for decades, with plenty of debate as to its veracity. It concerns how the original Queen Mary got its name. Cunard's ships had always been distinguished by the "ia" at the end of their names -- Mauretania, Lusitania, Carpathia. In 1934, speculation ran rampant that the next ship would be christened Victoria, the first in the line to be named after British royalty. Ken Behrmann, a ship's officer and occasional tour guide on the Queen Mary -- now docked in Long Beach, Calif.

ABOARD THE QUEEN MARY 2 -- Let's suppose you were going to have some people come stay with you for about a week -- say about 2,620 of your closest friends. You're not too worried because you'll also have a staff of roughly 1,250 to help you out. Besides putting all these people up, you'll have to entertain them and keep them occupied. You'll have to feed them, of course, guests and staff alike. And they eat a lot. You'll have to plan on breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as in-between snacks and midnight noshes.

NEW YORK -- The world's longest ocean liner sailed under one of the world's longest suspension bridges and past one of the world's most famous statues Thursday before docking in New York City for the first time. The ship, the 1,132-foot-long Queen Mary 2, swept under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge as the sun was coming up on a hazy harbor. The ship, carrying 2,600 passengers and 1,200 crew members, glided by the Statue of Liberty, surrounded by tugboats, police vessels and Coast Guard boats, all dwarfed by the black-and-white leviathan.

The contest is over, and winner of the behemoth-of-the-seas crown goes to the $780 million Queen Mary 2 -- the largest, longest, tallest, widest and most expensive passenger ship ever built. It is taller, keel to smokestack, than the Statue of Liberty; longer and heavier than a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier; and can generate enough power to light Southampton, England, its home port. When it debuts next month, Cunard Line's first new vessel in more than 34 years will displace twice as much ocean as its largest sibling, the Queen Elizabeth 2, tipping the scales at 150,000 gross registered tons and accommodating more than 2,600 passengers.

Rusted rivets on the Queen Mary indicate the ship should be put in dry dock immediately and repaired, a consultant's report said. A July report by the same marine engineer said $6 million in repair work was needed. The new report says an additional $6.2 million is needed to keep the tourist attraction safe, putting the cost of repairs at $12.2 million. The new report dampened the city's enthusiasm for taking over the luxury liner from the Board of Harbor Commissioners. ''The City Council believes it is prudent not to take possession of the ship until these inspections (of the rivets)

SOUTHAMPTON, England -- The world's largest cruise ship, the Queen Mary 2, arrived at its home port on the south coast of England and was welcomed in a ceremony tempered by the deaths of 15 people in a shipyard accident in November in St. Nazaire, France, where it was built. Hundreds of onlookers watched Friday as the $800 million vessel arrived, dwarfing small boats that sprayed jets of water. Queen Elizabeth II will officially name the vessel in a ceremony Jan. 8. The 14-day maiden voyage, from Southampton to Fort Lauderdale, is to start Jan. 12.

ST. NAZAIRE, France -- Inaugurating its reign as the world's largest ocean liner, the Queen Mary 2 sliced into the dark waters of the Atlantic on Monday, seen off by tens of thousands of onlookers and jets streaking the skies red, white and blue. The gigantic, shimmering vessel dwarfed tugboats that pulled it out to sea for its new British owner, Cunard Lines. But memories of 15 people killed when a gangway to the ship collapsed on visitors' day five weeks ago dampened the mood in St. Nazaire.